If you buy a tobacco pipe with a picture of a marijuana leaf on it

[Capitalocracy]

and choose to illegally smoke weed with it, is the manufacturer of the pipe responsible for encouraging you to smoke weed?

[jberryhill]

1. "Responsible" in what sense?

Legally liable for something?

Morally culpable?

[Capitalocracy]

4. Legally liable

Morally, they're gold. Nothing wrong with a little grass.

[jberryhill]

8. Depends on whether it would be "drug paraphernalia" in your state

There are state and even municipal ordinances on that sort of thing.

There is not one answer that you will get from DU or elsewhere which is applicable everywhere.

[cthulu2016]

2. No, but they may be guilty of manufacturing drug paraphernalia

The standards in that bullshit area of law are very motive-oriented

[arcane1]

3. I wouldn't call that "encouraging" n/t

[RZM]

5. What about a t-shirt with a pot leaf on it?

Chances are, if you're buying a pipe or a shirt with leaf on it, you already smoke pot.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

6. Is this a "gun manufacturers are liable for wrongful gun deaths" analogy?

Either way I'll say "no" because the image of a MJ leaf is just an image, a form of speech and as such it is to be protected. The abuse or misuse of a legally protected right does not abrogate the government's obligation for the general protection of the overall right.

That would also be my answer is this were a gun manufacturer's liability analogy.

[Capitalocracy]

10. What I actually had in mind was a Megaupload analogy. nt

[Nuclear Unicorn]

12. heh

The fed going after megaupload is futile.

Just after Napster was sued bit-torrents emerged as a means to skirt the problem of centralized servers. When the government started scanning IPs for people sharing loads of files they started busting little kids and that got them too much bad press. Then came SOPA/PIPA and again they've been humiliated into retreat.

OK, so they got megaupload but the community that does this will find another workaround. This another silly scheme to impose another silly form of Prohibition. It will take them a decade more or so to realize its unenforcible but by then business models will have evolved and the point will be moot.

I don't know about legal, moral or constitutional arguments but overall it seems pretty darned futile.

[cthulu2016]

13. The analogy there would be running a brothel

You buy a house and paint "Whorehouse" on the side.

You charge an entrance fee. You offer very small free rooms but charge a fee for rooms with a bed. You buy billboards advertising the brothel.

You pay the tenants of the rooms a cut of the entrance fee for each person who enters to visit their room.

Since the rooms can be rented by old ladies whose grandchildren don't mind paying a fee to visit their grandmother (they can wave at her for free, but to have a real conversation they have to pay) the service is not limited to prostitution.

Not taking a side. Just offering a functioning analogy.

[ZombieHorde]

7. Legally? I don't know. Otherwise? No. nt

[socialindependocrat]

9. My friend's mother

brought back Mojoj earrings from a vacation and she
didn't know what they were. She thought they were cute.

Try to argue with any cop that you don't know what a pot
leaf looks like and they'll just laugh.

IMHO if you want to own anythiung with a leaf or picture
of pot or whatever on it, you should be able to.

If you want to manufacture the same you should be able to.

The laws are getting too picky and too many.

[The Straight Story]

11. If you walk into a bar that allows smoking, and complain about smoking

Are the smokers in the bar to blame?

[Major Nikon]

14. Ask Tommy Chong

http://www.post-gazette.com/localnews/20030912chong0912p5.asp

[Kali]

15. I don't know about that but I was on a jury in a case that seemed to indicate if you got caught

with some pot and a tobacco pipe even without a leaf on it, that pipe was going to result in an additional charge of paraphernalia. As would a lighter and anything else "innocent" that might be used with the pot you were caught with.

My case was a razor blade and a straw combined with more than three boxes of decongestant.

[jberryhill]

16. If you needed all that to stay awake during the trial...

...then you should have asked to be excused instead of bringing all that stuff with you.

[Kali]

17. ...

[HappyMe]

18. Nope.

Don't get caught with it though.